John Stover is a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Sociology at Loyola University Chicago, having earned his
Bachelor's (Xavier University) and Master's
(Loyola) in Sociology in years prior. John's original
Master's-level research earned Loyola University
Chicago's very first award for excellence in graduate
student research, and his work has been published in a special
edition of Nova Religio
(2008).
Prior to his career in academia, John worked for nine years in a
diverse array of public and private sectors on both the East and
West coasts of the U.S. and inclusive of immigration advocacy,
adolescent mental health services, and non-profit fundraising.
John's current dissertation research highlights how
documentary filmmaking provides a unique form of social activism
that not only exposes audiences to the goals and values of the
movements being filmed, but also engages filmmakers in a process of
socially constructing realities that are aligned, or misaligned,
with the movements and issues they seek to advance. John is also
well versed in the sociologies of gender and sexuality, religion
and new religious movements, social movement theory (especially as
related to the GLBT movement), qualitative methodologies, and film
and society.
